Lyndall Urwick, Management Pioneer A Biography

Edward Brech (1909-2006) joined Urwick Orr and Partners in 1938 as a management consultant, initially working with Lyndall Urwick to produce the renowned three volume work The Making of Scientific Management. In Urwick Orr he played a leading role in the introduction of management training and techniques and also wrote copiously on his own account. In 1959 he was seconded to Unilever and in 1965 was appointed as Chief Executive of the Construction Industry Training Board. On his retirement he returned to research, initially through the pursuit of a PhD, which he was granted at the age of 85. He built on his PhD to produce a monumental series of five volumes collectively titled The Evolution of Modern Management in 2002 and then moved to this biography of his old employer, mentor and co-author, Lyndall Urwick, on which he was working when he died. Andrew Thomson graduated from Oxford in 1959 and worked in marketing with Unilever before taking a doctorate at Cornell and a series of academic positions at Glasgow University. Then in 1988 he became the first Dean of the Open University Business School at a time when it grew from small beginnings to become one of the largest business schools in the world in its student numbers. He also was the Chairman of the Council of University Management Schools (1985-87), Chairman of the British Academy of Management (1990-93) and Chairman of the SERC-ESRC Joint Committee (1985-88). His academic interests have ranged from industrial relations to management development and management history. He is now an Emeritus Professor at the Open University. John F. Wilson is Professor of Strategy at the University of Liverpool Management School. He has previously worked in the universities of Manchester, Leeds, Belfast, Nottingham, and Preston (UCLan). He is co-author with Andrew Thomson of The Making of Modern Management: British Management in Historical Perspective (OUP, 2006).